BORN >> 1967 in Yorkshire, England. Brought up in the West Country. EDUCATION >> Schooling to 'A' levels. Then studied for a BSc degree in Geography and Biology at the London University Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. WORK>> Owned and operated a contract cleaning company, 'Balistic Cleaning Services', holding hotel contracts in the West London area. A lead singer/guitarist on the side with a London Grunge band.

My earliest memory of travel was leaving home to investigate some road construction equipment a mile up the road from our house in Dorset. I was three years old.

Aside from this minor escapade travel held little appeal for me until my late teens. I made my first major overseas trip to Kenya in 1985. I found the experience of traveling solo in far flung lands extremely appealing. A short episode with the British Army followed, enough to convinced me that working in such a rigid, institutionalized environment was not for me. I then spent the next four years in London studying for my BSc and playing in a Grunge band at night. A side-line business cleaning hotel windows and carpets payed the bills. Steve and I met in the same degree class at university. After initially taking a distinct dislike to each other we soon became great friends.

Several years later in 1992 Steve invited me to join him on this caper to circumnavigate the world using only human power. My initial reaction was mixed: the watery sections of such an endeavour filled me with little enthusiasm, having always been at a loss to see the fun in being cold, wet and seasick, all at the same time. But the overland sections sounded fantastic: my head was filled with wildly romantic images of riding bicycles across the steppes of central Asia; trekking through the frozen wilderness of the Himalayas; staring into the flames of a roaring campfire after a hard day hacking through the Amazon jungle. And the three and a half years the expedition was projected to take sounded like an acceptable amount of time to rejuvenate from the wearisome London scene without totally going AWOL.

That was a long time ago. A third of my life has since passed and incredibly I find myself on the same path. What happened? The truth is neither of us really had the faintest idea of what we were getting ourselves into at the beginning. I suppose the combination of our naivity of just how much time and effort it takes to complete a true circumnavigation (hitting opposite ends of the earth - antipodal points), the immense cost involved (around half a million dollars by the end of it) and the unforeseeable accidents and mishaps have added up to it being such a monstrous project. Most major expeditions involve going off for a few months at any one time to climb a mountain or cross an ice cap before returning back to the security of the nest to cash in on the publicity and plan and raise money for the next adventure. Expedition 360 has been 16 of these major expeditions rolled into one.

Although the primary objective to circumnavigate the world using only human power remains the same, my reasons for doing it have changed over the years, and with them the inspiration to keep going. Instead of running away from England (as I think I was at the beginning) it is now more a question of riding forward on the back of ideas that I feel passionately about, and which justify going 'out there' - with all the associated risks - again and again.

Hence the increased emphasis to use Expedition 360 as a tool for humanitarian fundraising, for furthering children's learning experiences both in and outside the classroom and for promoting those perennial qualities of human compassion, environmental and social responsibility, and common citizenship - both at the local and global level - which are so vital if we, the human species, are yet to make a positive contribution towards the planet and each other.

Jason Lewis - April 2007

>> back to WHO WE ARE